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Today’s conventional wisdom asserts that Britain has an oversized, unstable
and socially unproductive financial sector. Cutting finance down to size
through the toughest application of the Basel III capital and regulatory
requirements, while forcing the banks to lend more through schemes such as
Project Merlin, are seen as necessary conditions for national revival.

This theory has been forcefully articulated by Mervyn King and Adair Turner
and in statements by members of the Independent Commission on Banking who
seemed to be hand-picked by the Government for their antagonism to the
financial sector. Politically, this banker-bashing is popular with the media
and